The case is instituted, it is understood, for the purpose of testing whether, under the late act of Congress known as the “civil rights bill,” colored persons are entitled to the same privileges of travel and accommodation on railroad routes as white persons.” Baltimore Sun, on the case of Mary J.C. Anderson and Ellen Garrison Jackson Clark v. Baltimore Railroad Company
Just weeks before thousands of Black Baltimoreans took to the streets for voting rights, one of the era’s most dynamic activists, George Hackett, passed away. His last public acts included advocacy for a federal amendment that would help ensure Black men’s access to the polls. Hackett lived until April 1870, long enough to see the 15th Amendment ratified, but not to take part in his city’s celebration of that milestone.
What might Baltimore as an inter-racial democracy look like? The thousands who gathered on May 19, 1870 to mark the ratification of the 15th Amendment demonstrated just that. Processing from Fells Point to Monument Square, were Black churches, fraternal orders, political clubs, labor unions, militias and civic organizations. This part of the city’s polity, which had operated too often in the shadows, stepped into the light and claimed an equal part in the body politic. Hackett was there — perhaps in spirit, and certainly in the minds of marchers including the men of the “Dreadnaught Association” who held aloft a banner commemorating him.1
In Baltimore, even before Hackett’s death, among Black activists the torch that burned for civil rights was already passed. Theirs was a city with a long history of demands for equality, dating back to men like Hezekiah Grice and William Watkins. That local struggle continued in the wake of the Civil War, even as Maryland as a Union state avoided direct federal oversight during Reconstruction. Black activists tested the reach of federal legislation in Baltimore, starting with the Civil Rights Act of 1866.
Hard Histories lab member Ariella Shua dug deep into the history of Baltimore’s post-war civil rights struggles. Ariella asked how Johns Hopkins’ plan for a hospital that separated Black and white patients compared to what operators of street cars and railroads required. She built upon the pioneering findings of legal historian David Bogen to discover how, as Mr. Hopkins laid out plans that separated Black from white patients, Baltimore’s public transportation carriers separated Black from white riders.2
The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was hard won, requiring Congress to override President Andrew Johnson’s veto. Its terms gave teeth to Hackett’s vision for an inter-racial democracy, providing that all citizens were entitled “to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens.” Educators Mary J.C. Anderson and Ellen Garrison Jackson Clark, lawyer Aaron Bradley, and Mrs. Annie A. Jakes, wife of a “well-known colored barber and waiter,” each challenged their relegation to separate accommodations when traveling. This vision of democracy demanded that no line be imposed between Black and white travelers.3
As Ariella Shua points out, the accommodations planned for Baltimore’s hospital patients and the facilities made available to the city’s travelers were more connected than we might think. Not only did Mr. Hopkins himself have an old and lucrative connection to the B&O Railroad, one that made his hospital bequest possible. B&O Railroad president, John W. Garrett, was also a founding trustee of Johns Hopkins University. The two men shared a vision for Baltimore, one that ran directly counter to George Hackett’s calls for a fully inter-racial future.
Thank you to Ariella Shua for her chronicle of Black Baltimorean’s early struggles against an emerging system of segregated transportation. Her work demonstrates how thinking about the city’s future was fraught and fractured. Baltimore may have avoided the federal oversight to which the one-time Confederate states were subjected. But the city and its public transportation carriers were not excused from the scrutiny of Black Baltimoreans who brought their grievances before state and federal courts.
— MSJ
“The Fifteenth Amendment: Ratification Celebration in Baltimore,” Sun, May 20, 1870; “The Fifteenth Amendment: The Grand Celebration Thursday,” Baltimore American, May 20, 1870.
David S. Bogen, “Precursors of Rosa Parks: Maryland Transportation Cases Between the Civil War and the Beginning of World War I,” Maryland Law Review 63 (2004): 721.